The Liars Dictionary. This item is unavailable.The Liars Dictionary

<b>NATIONAL BESTSELLER</b> &bull; <b>&ldquo;You wouldn&rsquo;t expect a comic novel about a dictionary to be a thriller too, but this one is. In fact, [it] is also a mystery, love story (two of them) and cliffhanging melodrama.&rdquo;&#160;&mdash;<i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br><br><b>An</b> <b>award-winning</b> <b>novel that chronicles the</b> <b>charming</b> <b>misadventures of a lovelorn Victorian lexicographer and the young woman put on his trail a century later to root out his misdeeds while confronting questions of her own sexuality and place in the world.</b><br><br><b><i>Mountweazel</i></b><i> n. the phenomenon of false entries within dictionaries and works of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement.</i><br><br>In the final year of the nineteenth century, Peter Winceworth is toiling away at the letter S for Swansby&rsquo;s multivolume <i>Encyclopaedic Dictionary</i>. But his disaffection with his colleagues compels him to assert some individual purpose and artistic freedom, and he begins inserting unauthorized, fictitious entries. In the present day, Mallory, the publisher&rsquo;s young intern, starts to uncover these mountweazels in the process of digitization and through them senses their creator&rsquo;s motivations, hopes, and desires. More pressingly, she&rsquo;s also been contending with a threatening, anonymous caller who wants Swansby&rsquo;s staff to &ldquo;burn in hell.&rdquo; As these two narratives coalesce, Winceworth and Mallory, separated by one hundred years, must discover how to negotiate the complexities of life&rsquo;s often untrustworthy, hoax-strewn, and undefinable path. An exhilarating, laugh-out-loud debut, <i>The Liar&rsquo;s Dictionary</i> celebrates the rigidity, fragility, absurdity, and joy of language while peering into questions of identity and finding one&rsquo;s place in the world.

ELEY WILLIAMS is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is the author of <I>Attrib. and Other Stories</I>, and her work has appeared in <I>The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story, Liberating the Canon, The Times Literary Supplement, </I>and<I> London Review of Books</I>. She lives in London.